MUMBAI, INDIA, March 23, 2008: Little would Jagdish Prasad Sharma have dreamed that his proficiency in Hindi would one day take him from the quiet holy town of Mathura to the bright lights of the US. Earlier this month, Sharma was one among the 100-odd Hindi teachers who travelled to Noida to be interviewed by a delegation from Connecticut and Carolina, in India to headhunt young, full-time Hindi teachers for their schools.
Hindi is the new Mandarin. Just as Mandarin is being learnt by youngsters all over the world to give them a strategic advantage with the emerging China, Hindi too is being sought after as the language of the other Asian tiger. Some schools in the US have decided to introduce Hindi as a foreign language with staples like French, Spanish and German.